While some proteins have a mainly structural role in cellular life, many proteins are biologically active. Living cells include many mechanisms by which the biological activity of a protein is modulated, including: modification of concentration of the protein or its substrates, modification of the concentration of materials that catalyzes protein activity, indirect modification of protein structure, such as by changing of pH or concentrations of materials that modify protein structure, and direct modification of protein spatial structure and/or charge distribution by attachment of cofactors such as a phosphate moiety (phosphorylation), glucose, ions, metal ions, heme groups or iron-sulfur complexes and coenzymes for example.
The symptoms of many diseases include changes in protein activity, as indicated, for example, by phosphorylation (hyper- or hypo-). One example is cardiac heart failure, where, as the disease progresses the phosphorylation of some proteins goes down and others go up. Levels of various proteins also change.
As described, for example in N Engl J Med 346:1357, 2002, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference, patients with CHF who respond to therapy with beta blockers manifest reversal that is normalization of the maladaptive fetal gene program.
In a paper entitled “Voltage-dependent potentiation of the activity of cardiac L-type calcium channel al subunits due to phosphorylation by cAMP-dependent protein kinase”, by Adrian SCULPTOREANU, Eric ROTMAN, Masami TAKAHASHI, Todd SCHEUER, AND William A. CATTERALL, in Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA Vol. 90, pp. 10135-10139, November 1993 (Physiology), the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference, fast phosphorylation of trans-membrane calcium channels and a possible mechanism therefor, are described.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,919,205, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference, describes regulation of type II cartilage genes and proteins using electromagnetic and electric fields.